Adam?”
Adam glanced up, distracted. His mind had wandered from Ronan’s bad behavior to Ashley’s interest in the journal, and he was wondering if it was more than the ordinary curiosity people possessed when faced with Gansey and his obsessive accessories. He knew Gansey would find him overly suspicious, unnecessarily propiertary of a search Gansey was more than willing to share with most people.
But Gansey and Adam sought Glendower for different reasons. Gansey longed for him like Arthur longed for the grail, drawn by a desperate but nebulous need to be useful to the world, to make sure his life meant something beyond champagne parties and white collars, by some complicated longing to settle an argument that waged deep inside himself.
Adam, on the other hand, needed that royal favor.
And that meant they needed to be the ones to wake Glendower. They needed to be the ones to find him first.
“Parrish,” Gansey repeated. “Come on.”
Adam made a face. He felt it would take more than pizza to improve Ronan’s character.
But Gansey was already grabbing the car keys to the Pig and stepping around his miniature Henrietta. Even though Ronan was snarling and Noah was sighing and Adam was hesitating, he didn’t turn to verify that they were coming. He knew they were. In three different ways, he’d earned them all days or weeks or months before, and when it came to it, they’d all follow him anywhere.
“ Excelsior ,” said Gansey, and shut the door behind them.
B arrington Whelk was feeling less than sprightly as he slouched down the hall of Whitman House, the Aglionby admin building. It was five P.M. , the school day well over, and he’d only left his town house in order to pick up homework that had to be graded before the next day. Afternoon light spilled in the tall, many-paned windows to his left; on the right was a hum of voices from the staff offices. These old buildings looked like museums at this time of day.
“Barrington, I thought you were out today. You look terrible. You sick?”
Whelk didn’t immediately formulate an answer. For all intents and purposes, he was still out. The question asker was Jonah Milo, the well-scrubbed eleventh- and twelfth-grade English teacher. Despite an affinity for plaid and thin-legged corduroy pants, Milo wasn’t unbearable, but Whelk didn’t care to discuss his absence from class this morning with him. St. Mark’s Eve was beginning to have a sheen of tradition for him, one that involved spending most of the night getting smashed before falling asleep on his kitchenette floor just before dawn. This year he’d had the forethought to request St. Mark’s Day off. Teaching Latin to Aglionby boys was punishment enough. Teaching it with a hangover was excruciating.
Finally, Whelk merely held up the grubby stack of handwritten homework assignments as answer. Milo’s widened his eyes at the sight of the name written on the topmost paper.
“Ronan Lynch! Is that his homework?”
Flipping the stack around to read the name on the front, Whelk agreed that it was. As he did, a few boys on their way to crew team practice crashed past, pushing him into Milo. The students probably didn’t even realize they were being disrespectful; Whelk was barely older than they were, and his dramatically large features made him look younger. It was still easy to mistake him for one of the students.
Milo disentangled himself from Whelk. “How do you get him to come to class?”
The mere mention of Ronan Lynch’s name had scraped something raw inside Whelk. Because it was never Ronan by himself, it was Ronan as part of the inseparable threesome: Ronan Lynch, Richard Gansey, and Adam Parrish. All of the boys in his class were affluent, confident, arrogant, but the three of them, more than anyone else, reminded him of what he’d lost.
Whelk struggled to remember if Ronan had ever missed a class with him. The days of the school year blurred together, one long and unending day that
Adam glanced up, distracted. His mind had wandered from Ronan’s bad behavior to Ashley’s interest in the journal, and he was wondering if it was more than the ordinary curiosity people possessed when faced with Gansey and his obsessive accessories. He knew Gansey would find him overly suspicious, unnecessarily propiertary of a search Gansey was more than willing to share with most people.
But Gansey and Adam sought Glendower for different reasons. Gansey longed for him like Arthur longed for the grail, drawn by a desperate but nebulous need to be useful to the world, to make sure his life meant something beyond champagne parties and white collars, by some complicated longing to settle an argument that waged deep inside himself.
Adam, on the other hand, needed that royal favor.
And that meant they needed to be the ones to wake Glendower. They needed to be the ones to find him first.
“Parrish,” Gansey repeated. “Come on.”
Adam made a face. He felt it would take more than pizza to improve Ronan’s character.
But Gansey was already grabbing the car keys to the Pig and stepping around his miniature Henrietta. Even though Ronan was snarling and Noah was sighing and Adam was hesitating, he didn’t turn to verify that they were coming. He knew they were. In three different ways, he’d earned them all days or weeks or months before, and when it came to it, they’d all follow him anywhere.
“ Excelsior ,” said Gansey, and shut the door behind them.
B arrington Whelk was feeling less than sprightly as he slouched down the hall of Whitman House, the Aglionby admin building. It was five P.M. , the school day well over, and he’d only left his town house in order to pick up homework that had to be graded before the next day. Afternoon light spilled in the tall, many-paned windows to his left; on the right was a hum of voices from the staff offices. These old buildings looked like museums at this time of day.
“Barrington, I thought you were out today. You look terrible. You sick?”
Whelk didn’t immediately formulate an answer. For all intents and purposes, he was still out. The question asker was Jonah Milo, the well-scrubbed eleventh- and twelfth-grade English teacher. Despite an affinity for plaid and thin-legged corduroy pants, Milo wasn’t unbearable, but Whelk didn’t care to discuss his absence from class this morning with him. St. Mark’s Eve was beginning to have a sheen of tradition for him, one that involved spending most of the night getting smashed before falling asleep on his kitchenette floor just before dawn. This year he’d had the forethought to request St. Mark’s Day off. Teaching Latin to Aglionby boys was punishment enough. Teaching it with a hangover was excruciating.
Finally, Whelk merely held up the grubby stack of handwritten homework assignments as answer. Milo’s widened his eyes at the sight of the name written on the topmost paper.
“Ronan Lynch! Is that his homework?”
Flipping the stack around to read the name on the front, Whelk agreed that it was. As he did, a few boys on their way to crew team practice crashed past, pushing him into Milo. The students probably didn’t even realize they were being disrespectful; Whelk was barely older than they were, and his dramatically large features made him look younger. It was still easy to mistake him for one of the students.
Milo disentangled himself from Whelk. “How do you get him to come to class?”
The mere mention of Ronan Lynch’s name had scraped something raw inside Whelk. Because it was never Ronan by himself, it was Ronan as part of the inseparable threesome: Ronan Lynch, Richard Gansey, and Adam Parrish. All of the boys in his class were affluent, confident, arrogant, but the three of them, more than anyone else, reminded him of what he’d lost.
Whelk struggled to remember if Ronan had ever missed a class with him. The days of the school year blurred together, one long and unending day that
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